Comparing Older Domestic Engines

Comments

Agree with you. My '39 Master DeLuxe had the identical mechanicals and 60 mph was it's best and smoothest speed. I used to have an oil soaked "blanket" with two holes that fit over the tappets. That thing was effective as long as the intakes were adjusted to 6 thousandths & exhaust 13. We drove it from 1950 to 1958 lasting from high school through college & the Army.

Brings back memories - In the early 60's, while I was in High School, I was running around in a 1937 Dodge Business Coupe with a stock flathead in it. She made about 60 - 70 HP I think. As I remember, the engine only had 3 main bearings, and, would torque knock if lugged in 3rd gear. She could only make 60 with a tailwind.

Pre-war engines were built for torque and smoothness, certainly not for revs---that was a sure way to wear them out quickly. Not until you got those short-stroke V8s could you start to wind up domestic engines. This is one reason you see overdrives on a lot of the older cars with flatheads.

Of course, back in the day, people were expected to overhaul their engines periodically, even at 40K to 60K miles.

Well that engine is decades ahead in development from the one we were talking about, so yeah, as time went on, the old flatheads got to spin a bit faster, especially as people learned how to get them to breathe better with special intakes and cams and multiple carbs.

Our 2nd Chevy was a '53 Bel Air Sedan with 7,200 miles in April 1955 for $1500. It was a stick with the 235.5 engine. Thus, I think '52 was the last year for the 216.5.The '53 was geared better for highway use & regretted selling it in Honolulu, however, the same car was worth $500 less in SF March '58. Those were the years, two married college grads with jobs and a couple of cars - no kids. How else can I piss you off?

If it was a 1953 with a stick, it still used the babbett bearings. The ones with Powerglide had inserts and full pressure lubrication. By 1954 all of them had inserts. Of course those were much better engines but the 216's weren't as bad as some people would have you believe.

Funny, the stick 235's had mechanical lifters and the Powerglides had hydraulic until 1956 when they all had hydraulic lifters.

The lastest issue of Hemmings Classic Car magazine has a detailed article about the Pontiac I-8 engine. This was of interest to me because my dad owned a '47, a '49 and a '52, the latter two with Hydramatic. After reading about the engineering and features that were incorporated into this engine, to make it rugged, reliable and smooth, I have the impression that Pontiac gave buyers their money's worth when they upgraded from the I-6 to the I-8. It also seemed to be a good value compared with the Chevy Stovebolt 6, although the latter had overhead valves, whereas the Pontiac engines were flatheads.

This issue of Classic Car also featured an article on the AMC V8, which was introduced in some '56 Hudson and Nash models. This engine displaced 250 c.i., compared with 265 in the '55 Chevy. Yet, for all the fame of the Chevy small block, the smaller AMC engine pumped out 190 horsepower, compared with 162 for the 2-barrel Chevy, and 180 for the 4-barrel, which also had duel exhausts.

An interesting side note was that AMC had a formal agreement with Studebaker-Packard to buy Packard engines for the large Nashes and Hudsons. In fact, AMC used Packard engines in the '54, '55 and '56 Nash Ambassador and Hudson Hornet. In return, AMC and Studebaker-Packard had a gentleman's agreement that called for S-P to buy certain body stampings from AMC. The understanding was that the dollar amount of the stampings was to approximately equal the value of the engines. This arrangement made sense for both companies, since S-P had excess engine capacity, while AMC had excess stamping capacity, and both companies stood to benefit from the unit cost savings this exchange would have yielded. What happened was that AMC lived up to its contract, but S-P ignored that gentleman's agreement. According to this article, S-P president, James Nance, thought that AMC wouldn't survive, and that S-P would be able to buy AMC cheap. This infuriated George Romney, AMC's CEO at the time, and he reacted by having AMC develop its own V8. Interesting, eh?

Nance later went on to become a VP for Edsel, to continue his string of successes. :P

The Chevy small block's incredible success wasn't predicated strictly on HP, but rather lighter weight, ability to rev, lower deck height, and build-ability. These attributes are a great advantage for longevity of design. There were plenty of sturdy V8 engines in the 50s, but they were porkers. The Chevy 265 shoehorned very nicely into the 1955 Corvette and saved the model no doubt. No way you were going to get an AMC V8 into anything else unless it looked like a small house or didn't have a hood. Well of course I exaggerate but you know, a matter of inches, and weight, is important in car design.

Well I'll give Nance one pass...it was Romney who accused Nance, and forever black-marked him, for trashing the Packard archives. This is now shown to have been untrue...it was Curtis Wright negligence whilst administering Studebaker that caused so much Packard material to be throw away.

We'll probably never know the truth, for certain, about which of these two men was more responsible for AMC and S-P not working more cooperateively. Maybe it was just bad chemistry. Or, maybe, as the Classic Car article suggests, Nance didn't behave honorably.

Since neither AMC nor S-P survived, maybe a merger would have given the combined company a fighting chance at survival. Maybe not. Both companies were probably too weak by, say, 1956, to compete with the Big Three and, later, the Japanese. Then there was the issue of model overlap. That might have been resolvable with the right leadership, but it would have been difficult. Anyway, it's too bad that we no longer have the opportunity to buy Packards, Sudebakers, Nashes and Hudsons, or even Croselys, for that matter. For whatever reason I don't feel quite the same about Kaisers, but, as long as we're dreaming, heck, why not Kaisers and even Frazers too. The Kaiser Darrin was a neat car in its day.

After working at Ford, Nance went to the banking sector, and apparently did quite well. Perhaps he finally found his niche. Packard wanted him in the first place because he had turned around Hotpoint (the apppliance maker). The Packard board of directors, realizing that the company desperately needed new blood at the top, recruited him for the job.

Regarding the Chevy V-8's success - in addition to the factors you mentioned, I've read that Chevy cleverly made sure that plenty of after-market parts were available for those who wanted more performance from their smallblocks. Ford did the same thing with the 5.0 and 4.6 V-8s from the 1980s forward - hence, their popularity with performance buffs today.

Romney claimed that Nance called him "George Mason's errand boy," so there must have been bad blood between them even before Mason's unexpected death in 1954.

I doubt that a merger between AMC and Studebaker-Packard would have saved either company in the long run. Studebaker dragged down Packard. It probably would have dragged down AMC, too.

It's also worth noting that the visions that Nance and Romney had for their respective companies were so different that I doubt the men could have worked together. Nance wanted Studebaker-Packard to compete directly with the Big Three. He was planning a full-line of revamped 1957 Studebakers, Clippers and Packards to do just that until the insurance companies pulled the rug out from under him by denying the necessary financing.

Even if Studebaker-Packard had gotten the financing, the company probably would not have succeeded in the long run. Chrysler had trouble keeping up with Ford and GM by the late 1950s. I doubt that Studebaker-Packard would have had better luck, especially given that the clays of the planned 1957 models I've seen really weren't anything special. Not many people were going to swap their Oldsmobiles and Buicks for Nance's planned 1957 and later Clippers.

Romney was ready to bet the farm on the compact Rambler by 1956, which was considered quite a gamble by conventional standards. With sales of the "regular" Nash and Hudson models dwindling away after 1954, he had no real choice, but most auto executives would have tried to save those models by coming out with all-new models, or at least heavily facelifted ones, for 1958.

Nance would never have supported placing all of the company's bets on the Rambler - which turned out to be the correct one, buying AMC several more years of life. Nor would he have supported bringing back the 1955 Rambler as the 1958 Rambler American, another unorthodox move that was surprisingly successful for AMC.

Yes, the aftermarket was critical to the Chevy small block's success, as was Chevy's often-secretive support for racing. It didn't hurt either to have their engines in the iconic Corvette, or their other small blocks and big blocks featured in rock n' roll lyrics.

Ford engines were pretty much unimpressive in the 1950s. The "Blower Birds" had no more effect on the general public than the blown Studebakers.

Without aftermarket, without street racing, without professional competitive successes, there was no way to beat GM in the "image" game when it came to engines. Finally Chrysler managed it, in the late 60s, once they had all the other prerequisites in order. Chrysler had to build the support network that GM had.

Engines in the 50s and 60s were about raw power. There was no demand for, nor need for, "sophistication". The most successful engines were brutes. Iron blocks, pushrods, and pistons the size of your head.